Raw Recipes with Wild Garlic

- by Heather Gardner

Wild garlic grows prolifically at this time of year. Mingling amongst the bluebells to form fragrant carpets of delight on the ferny forest floors. They are best to pick and use just before their beautiful white star like flowers explode into bloom, around about now April – May. So you’re just in time to get the kids ready, put your wellies on and get out to the woods to pick a few baskets of this green gold. Check out my previous blog to see all the wonderful health giving properties of this delicious wonder weed.

Heather is one of our participants on the Wild Edible program with Sergie! Below are eight fabulous recipes you can use with your wild garlic harvest this year!

1. Wild Garlic “Butter”

Ingredients:

6-8 Wild garlic Leaves

75g/3 oz Coconut Oil

1 teaspoon lemon juice – optional

A small splash of Olive Oil

Salt & Pepper to taste

Directions:

Wash and thoroughly dry the Wild garlic leaves, using some kitchen paper or a towel. Shred them with a sharp knife as finely as possible. Melt the coconut oil gently in a bowl over a saucepan of hot water. When liquid, add in the wild garlic & other ingredients, whisking it well until it’s completely mixed. Then pour into a ramekin or other non-plastic dish. Let it harden in the fridge and serve as required. Delicious over a baked sweet potato, steamed greens or veg. Also lovely on some Essene bread, warm from the dehydrator. If you eat dairy then use butter instead of the oil, but try to source raw organic butter if possible.

2. Wild Garlic Preserved in Oil (or Vinegar)

A great way to preserve your Wild Garlic and enjoy it all year round.

Ingredients:

500g Wild garlic leaves

500ml Organic Cold pressed Olive oil

1 tsp natural salt

Directions:

Make sure your leaves are clean and completely dry. Add them to a food processor or blender with the oil and salt and blend to a puree. Keep in the fridge in a glass jar with a layer of olive oil on top to preserve it, though use up within a week to prevent the growth of bacteria. The best way to store this for any length of time is to freeze it in small batches or ice cube trays (then pop the frozen cubes into a zip lock bag)

Wild Garlic Cider Vinegar

Another lovely way to enjoy your wild garlic is to bruise a handful of leaves and add them to a bottle of cider vinegar, let this sit for up to 6 weeks, giving it the odd shake. Adds a nice touch to your salad dressings.

3. Wild Garlic Dressing

Place a handful of Wild Garlic in your blender and cover with 3 parts olive oil & 1 part cyder vinegar or lemon juice. Blend and use as a sauce or dressing for any of your dishes and salads. If you want a creamier sauce then add a spoon of Tahini or Dijon mustard.

4. Wild Garlic May’no’naise (serves 4)

Ingredients:

2 Ripe Avocados

½ cup of hemp hearts, cashews, pine nuts or macadamias

A small handful of Wild Garlic Leaves

A few sprigs of Parsley

2 Tbsp Olive Oil

Juice of half a small lemon

½ cup of water

Pinch of salt, paprika, cayenne or chili powder & kelp powder

Directions:

Blend until smooth adding more water if you need it. Store what isn’t eaten in a glass jar with a lid, pour some olive oil over the mayonnaise to keep out the air and preserve it.

5. Wild Garlic Hummus (serves 2-4)

Ingredients:

2 cups courgette/zucchini

1 small handful Wild Garlic

¾ cup tahini

¼ cup olive oil

½ cup lemon juice

1 tsp cumin powder & 1 tsp paprika

Pinch of salt.

Directions:

Blend all the ingredients together, you may need to adjust amounts of liquid depending how watery your courgettes are. You can use sprouted chickpeas instead of courgette but to enhance the digestibility its recommended to steam them a little first or cover with just under boiling water for 5 mins to soften. They are no longer raw but they are still very healthy and easy to digest.

Directions:

Place all the ingredients into your food processor and start to blend, when blended coarsely, start to drizzle oil through the top until it’s the consistency you like. Place into clean dry glass jars and cover the top in oil to preserve, store in the fridge for several weeks, and always keep covered in oil. Also freezes well, you can freeze in portion sizes and then store them in a zip lock bag.

7. Wild Garlic Soup (serves 4)

Ingredients:

1 large handful of wild garlic

3 cups of Celeriac or parsnip

1 cup of fennel bulb

2 stalks of celery

½ cup of Hemp Hearts, soaked nuts or avocado flesh

¼ cup of olive oil
& 1 tsp lecithin
(both optional)

1 green chili or ½ tsp chili powder
(optional)

1 desert spoon of white miso or a pinch of salt

4 cups of warm water

Directions:

First wash the wild garlic & chop. Scrub & cube the parsnip, fennel & celery. Place all the other ingredients except the oil in your blender and blend until warm & smooth. Then add the olive oil in bit by bit to emulsify the soup and give it an airy quality, leave it out if you want to minimize fats in your diet. Pour into warmed bowls, with a swirl of wild garlic pesto and sprinkle with some minced parsley.

8. Creamy Wild Garlic Rawsotto

Rice Ingredients & Directions:

2-4 cups of Parsnip rice – process the parsnips in a food processor until it resembles rice.
Or Wild Rice – soak the wild rice overnight, then allow to ‘sprout’ for several days, rinsing regularly until the rice starts to ‘split’, then its ready.

Directions:

Mix the ‘rice’, the veggies etc with the sauce, you can warm it in the dehydrator or in a bain-marie and serve with a green salad.

Recommended Reading

Seaweed and Eat It ~ A Family Foraging and Cooking Adventure by Fiona Houston & Xa MilneHedgerow Medicine by Julie Bruton Seal

About Heather Gardener

Heather is a lifelong 3rd generation vegetarian, Raw Food and Kundalini Yoga Teacher. She began learning about herbs and wild foods at a young age from her herbalist mother while growing up on a remote mountainside in Ireland and delving into the world of foraging, potion making, nutrition, and raw & living foods as a teenager searching for answers to numerous health challenges. At 20 she began learning and experimenting with the Raw Lifestyle and in 2005 she began to move onto a raw diet and has transitioned to a balanced high raw diet over time. She has studied Natural Nutrition and many other healing modalities and has over 10 years experience as a Natural Remedies, Health & Beauty manager and Brand manager within the UK Natural Products industry, and helping people to achieve better health naturally. Now she lives in the west of Ireland, teaching and running her business www.consciousearthcompany.com as well as running after her feisty little toddler! You can connect with her on her facebook page.

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There is SO much to learn about wild edibles! Join Heather and the other participants on our Introduction to Wild Edibles program through the Women’s Wellness University! You can get the healthiest foods on the planet for FREE and make amazing foods your whole family will love!

Restore Your Health & Happiness With Our Back To The Wild Summit

In this series of inspiring interviews with re-wilders, nature philosophers, authors and leading health and sustainability revolutionaries, you’ll learn:

How to use the elements as a simple template to increase your health on every level.

How to affect your genetics and activate the genes you want through easy diet and lifestyle changes!

The forgotten factors that make sun vital to your health and why the sunscreen craze is making people sicker than ever.

Very good indeed and nice to see a recipe for Wild Garlic soup without potato in it. As for the (otherwise excellent) Wild Garlic Pesto recipe; I do not quite understand what you add about Parsley, namely that it “helps to neutralize that garlic breath!” because one of the nice features of Wild Garlic is that it does NOT leave a Garlic breath!